


It Was The Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times (PG-15)

by vinegardog



Category: Farscape
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mild Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 22:30:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8178493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinegardog/pseuds/vinegardog
Summary: Aeryn knows how to distract and inspire John.
Alternate ending to Bad Timing.





	

Written for SC88 hosted by A Damned Scientist – It’s All About Timing

Set of course during Bad Timing in S4 and deviating from canon.

Rated PG-15 for scenes of a sexual nature

Word count approx 1900

The characters are not mine but I do adore them, obviously.

Warning: Haven’t written something in ages so I am rusty and misfiring like Winona in A Clockwork Nebari.

Thanks to A Damned Scientist for the challenge and for the beta.

Title from the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities  
_It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way. . . ._

  
**It was the best of times, it was the worst of times (PG-15)**

The strange wibbly wobbly, timey wimey feeling of extended startburst had somehow made the experience of sex with Aeryn even more intense than usual, which was something John would have never thought possible. Any more intense and the top of his head would have blown off and his brain spilled out in a puddle of grey goo on the floor. As it was, he already thought he could feel parts of it trickling out of his ears.

As pleasant – no, strike that, as mind-frelling – as the experience had been, Chiana had got it wrong. Granted, it had done things to his body that he hadn’t even thought possible however it had done absolutely nada to free up his blocked up brain, to release the flow of numbers, equations and ideas he needed to solve the problem of how to close the wormhole to Earth before it was too late.

What a frelled-up time to suffer from writer’s block, or rather from astrophysicist’s brain freeze, right when his people, his planet, everything he loved and cherished from his past were in jeopardy: Laid bare, defenceless and completely vulnerable to the threat of the Scarrans. And all because he had opened his big, fat mouth and let it run unchecked while showing off to His Majesty The Imperial Upright Iguana on Katratzi. Showing off about flowers of all things. What a frellwit he was. Maybe, just maybe, the destruction of his home planet and everything on it apart from a single genus of pretty tropical flower would finally teach him the lesson that his thick skull seemed so reluctant to learn: Stop blurting things out and keep your pie-hole shut. You’d think he’d have learnt that by now…

This self-pitying, self-slating train of thought that John had embarked on was mercifully interrupted by Aeryn shifting and stretching in his arms. She had been resting draped over him: left arm flung across his chest, left leg bent over his right thigh. Her left foot - the only part of her showing any signs of life - had been rubbing lazily up and down his shin but that had been pretty much it. The rest of her naked body was completely slack and still while she basked in the afterglow of an amazing climax. She had been quiet like that for about a quarter of arn now, long enough for his mind to get over its own orgasmic white-out and start spinning almost out of control in excruciating self-loathing as it so often did of late.

However Aeryn, who over the last four cycles had developed an uncanny ability when it came to gauging her Human’s mercurial moods, had sensed that the mechanisms of John’s brain had started to grind hard, gathering speed in a frantic run towards the precipice, so she now stirred and, with implacable determination, sprang into action.

Her face, which had been buried in the hollow of his collarbone, now slowly moved up. Her mouth trailed a hot path along the well-defined tendon of his neck, following its line steadily and inexorably upwards, towards his earlobe, where- she knew from experience – it played havoc with his hormones when it sealed onto it, bit it hard enough to cause pain and then sucked it better.

John squeaked in startled discomfort and then moaned in appeased delight. Then he waited, hoping that more would follow.

He shouldn’t have worried because Aeryn’s assault was far from over. He soon felt her tongue join her lips and teeth: the licks and flicks she lavished on the tender, helpless shell of his ear made his toes curl and his loins tighten so hard that his butt lifted off the mattress in a rictus of raw, uncontrolled want – his brain all but unaware of it and quickly going AWOL – the groan escaping his throat loud enough to startle the DRDs stationed in the corridor beyond the closed doors of their quarters.

“Oh hell, Aeryn, please, please don’t stop whatever you do, just don’t stop!” He begged, all self-recriminations forgotten in the heat of the moment and of her exhaustive ministrations.

He didn’t get a verbal answer to his plea, she just worked him over so hard and so thoroughly and for so long with her mouth, her hands, her entire body that the next arn became a heavenly haze filled only with pleasure and sensation. Time, and with it all of his worries, ceased to exist, obliterated by a blizzard of milky skin that tasted of spice; firm and soft touches that moulded him like clay; scented raven hair that tickled his skin; wide white smiles that blinded his glazed-over eyes; Sebacean loud and low growls that pulled and tugged at his groin; and everything else that made Aeryn the unrivalled mistress and centre of his universe.

When John finally regained the use of his faculties and speech, he held her tight in his arms, stared deep into her sated grey-blue eyes and in a low rumble that scratched his throat and vibrated against the slender female hand pressed tight onto his chest, drawled:

“Honey, how did ya know?”

“Know what?” She purred into the same ear she had devoured without mercy only a short arn ago.

“That my mind… my mind was spinning out of control. That I needed a bubble. A protective bubble against the fears… the demons…” His voice petered out as his eyes took on that far away, intense look she had seen transform his face so many times before when wormhole matters swirled around in his head and consumed his thoughts.

“John?” She tried to claim his attention and failed. “John!” She repeated more firmly - both of her hands holding his face - willing him to come back to her, to the here and now. “John! Look at me! What? What is it? What are you thinking about? Talk to me.”

“A bubble, Aeryn. That is what a wormhole is, a bubble in time and space. Don’t you see? A bubble! It’s that simple, I… I just need to find a way…” His voice once again failed to finish his thoughts out loud; the cogs in his brain now freed up and spinning unimpeded like the gears of a well-oiled machine.

“A way to do what, John?”

“Pierce it. I need to work out a way to pierce it and collapse it, baby!” He kissed her lips, quickly but with relieved, almost feverish intensity and got out of their bed in search of pants, socks and boots, all the while muttering to himself about needing paper and pen and how Chi had been on to a winner with her sex idea, after all. A few microts later, while still struggling to insert his left arm through one of the sleeves of his black T, he leaned down and once again kissed her addictive lips: “I love you, baby. You are my muse. Never change.” And then he left in a hurry, unlaced boot- laces trailing behind him, to go talk to Pilot about the piercing of space-temporal bubbles and the plan that was now clearly forming in in his mind.

\--------------------------

John was on a high. The plan was in place. Pilot had been convinced – by Rygel of all people! – to leave Moya and assist with the piercing and closing of the wormhole. The maths and equations made flawless sense. It would work. It had to work. He would make it work! He would not contemplate any other outcome but success, not when Earth depended on it.

For the first time in days, he felt optimistic about putting an end to this nightmare. He felt antsy. He felt elated. He had giant rattlers in his stomach. He was going to save Earth. He was going to save it without abandoning his principles and without taking Scorpy’s offer of help. He was going to do it in his own way, with his friends’ help, without owing anything to the Peacekeepers. Hell, his father may turn out to be right after all: he might just end up being his own kind of hero.

“How long to the wormhole, Pilot?” He asked fidgeting with the control panels on Command.

Aeryn was a quiet, steady presence by his side. Her hooded eyes followed his nervy, jerky movements with concentrated focus. She made her body appear relaxed, but the true hidden tension in it was all too easy to spot if you knew her like the rest of the crew did. Crew who now stood at the back of the cavernous room in tense silence, their eyes flitting from the Human whom they all had come to love in their own way, to each other and back to the Human.

“One more short starburst and we will be at the wormhole co-ordinates, Commander. Not long now.” Pilot replied, his voice edgy. “Moya and I hope that the extended starburst plan we implemented worked as planned. We hope we didn’t let you down…”

“You didn’t and it did. I bet it worked like a charm, Pilot.” John said loudly and then added sotto-voce for nobody’s benefit in particular but his own. “It must work, everything depends on it.” And he stared out through the view screen at the space-time blur of starburst, unaware of several pairs of worried eyes burning a hole through his back.

Finally, Moya emerged from her long tour de force with a bright explosion of light and electrostatic sparkle and came gracefully to a standstill in the peaceful, cold, blackness of space.

The wormhole was right in front of them and it was wide open. Its blue vortex mesmerizing. Its swirling maw hypnotic.

A Scarran Stryker flanked it and menacingly guarded it.

Silence enveloped Command like a heavy cloak. Aeryn’s hand reached out, grabbed John’s and squeezed, hard. Her quick mind reaching the conclusion that his own more dazed, incredulous one was half a microt slower to reach.

The Scarrans had beaten them to Earth.

The Scarrans had already gone through the wormhole, the one he was supposed to collapse to stop them from invading and decimating his planet.

The Scarrans were without doubt right at that very moment mercilessly attacking his home; destroying everything in their path in search of a pretty flower; killing indiscriminately and ruthlessly in the pursuit of it.

Pilot’s sorrowful voice reached him, from far away as if in a bad dream.

“Moya and I are so very sorry, Commander. We… we have failed you.” He paused and then resumed, brokenly, uttering the words that John had refused to believe that would ever be uttered, the words that he would not forget for as long as he lived: “Moya’s sensors… Moya’s sensors are detecting massive explosions all over the surface.”

Moya and Pilot had not failed.

He had.

Yet again he had made the wrong choice and now it would cost billions of Human lives.

Aeryn turned and put her arms around him. She whispered her sorrow to him at first, and then she spoke words he did not hear in a firm, louder tone trying to wake him from his frozen paralysis. But nothing she said reached him: John stood, numbly, a black hole of grief and despair swallowing his mind and his sanity.

The End

 


End file.
